How to Avoid Twitter Embarrassment

Twitter is a social phenomenon. Millions of people use it daily, many constantly use it through the day - tweeting lots of times in an hour, in a minute and so on. Regardless of whether it has already reached its peak and users are jumping ship to micro-blogging with a bit more meat (Tumblr, Posterious, Soup etc.) or if it will continue to be a leading tool for social communication, it is not without its controversy and troubles.

A recent spat between nutritionist Gillian McKeith and good science advocate Ben Goldacre has made a few headlines in the UK. This reminded me of many other occasions where celebrities have got into some both because of throwaway tweets. It's important to remember that twitter is public. Unless you make your account private, anyone can see it. Not just your followers, not just other Twitter users but everyone with access to the Internet will be able to read it. Likewise, deleting your tweet might not also mean it's permenantly deleted. The web has a canny nack for caching and archiving itself.

There are a few things to keep in mind though when tweeting. Remember that unlike web forums or message boards, twitter can be linked back to you as a person. It is not so easy to be anonymous on Twitter. Thus, don't say something that you wouldn't be comfortable saying in public and if it's about someone/something in particular, don't say it if you would not say it to them in person. Even though you might not think they'll read it, they just might and then what will you do? There are many examples of people getting fired from jobs for posting things online that they shouldn't or professional relationships fall apart over things one party has said on Twitter.

Twitter, above all else, is a communication tool. Thus, someone is bound to read your tweet at one point or another so you must always be careful about what you say or post. Not just disparaging things, but don't post things that are too private. This cannot be stressed enough! I know for a lot of people, the Internet has become so ubiquitous that it is a part of everyday life and it is hard to see where online communication differs from offline communication. And in some respects I agree. In some respects online communication has many positives over offline communication but there are some negatives. Online communication is often with people you don't know well. Things you confide in them might not remain confidential.

Similarly, you have to be sure that the person you are talking to is actually the person you want to talk to. Many celebrities and famous people have opened Twitter accounts, many others have not. The person who you are following and think is your favorite singer or actor, might just actually be Average Joe from up the road. They don't even have to be famous, people may choose to fabricate an online persona or embellish the truth a little. Always be sure you trust the person 100% before revealing anything that you may regret telling in the future.

As much as Twitter is, it's always important to remember it is not a private IM conversation, it is very public and people just might bring you up on your tweets!

Facebook Hits 500 Million Users

Facebook recently announced that they have passed the 500 millionth registration. To put that into some context, that's 7% of the global population and 25% of Internet users. That's crazy! The BBC has a lot of interesting data too.

Facebook continues to see the largest growth of all social network sites, however it's also good news for Twitter, Orkut and LinkedIn. Sadly MySpace, Flickr, Bebo and Friends Reunited are not adapting quickly enough to Facebook's dominance. Do you remember Friends Reunited? A few years ago, when I was just a wee young whipper snapper it was all the rage! I was still at school at the time and a bit young to use it so the Friends Reunited fad went right over my head but I can remember my mum and her friends always going on about it. Friends Reunited can obviously be seen a pre-cursor to Facebook. Facebook was original only for university students. I think when it first opened you could only speak to someone in the same university as you. Imagine if it went down a more academic road? We'd all be swapping class notes on Facebook - maybe even having study sessions and revision workshops on there!

What else is really interesting is the comparison between Facebook and other social networks in specific countries. The BBC only gives data for US, UK, Brazil, Australia, Germany, Spain and Italy and it would be interesting to see Facebook fairs in Russia, China, India etc. (i.e. less Western-centric). Amazingly, Facebook has 127 million users in the United States, that's 41% of the population, 54% of the internet population. That means, for every 2 users of the internet in the US, 1 has a Facebook account. Isn't that crazy? In the UK, 24.2 million people have a Facebook account. That translates to 51.8% of UK internet users. That similarly equates to 40% of the population (based on recent population estimates).

Furthermore, the amount of time spent on Facebook per month has also gone up. In the US it has gone up by approximately 1 hour 20 minutes to 6 hours~. Whilst in the UK it has only gone up 20 minutes to 6 hours 10 minutes~. Interestingly Australia has seen Facebook usage nearly double to 7 hours 10 minutes~. This suggests we are increasingly becoming dependent on Facebook as a source of communication and/or entertainment. With the games industry on Facebook going from micro-transaction strength to strength and Facebook's rollout of being able to just about "Like" anything you see on the web, I wonder when the tail-off point will be reached?

What I find most interesting about the data is Brazil (arguably the least Western country examined) does not have Facebook as the number 1 social network. That honor goes to Orkut, Google's answer to Facebook. Orkut is somewhat popular but it has very niche markets - South America, Asia etc. Has Google made a smart move going after these new markets? I think quite possibly yes. The populations of many South American and Asian countries dwarf North American and European countries.

If a social network site can get a similar 40% of China's population registered, that would equate to 535,445,187 users. Leap frogging over Facebook as the world's most popular social network and with just 1 country! That's not to say that such an achievement would be easy to attain, I'm sure there are many cultural and technical difficulties to overcome when entering very different markets.

Like - The Word of the Future

I like this. You like that. He likes nothing. She likes everything.

Like is everywhere and we can't escape it! Facebook's eponymous term is now being taken up by other web 2.0 services. LinkedIn (one of the original social networks, although it is mainly used by professionals to build contacts and network) is now allowing users to 'like' things. And recently, Facebook made it much easier for webmasters and bloggers to allow people to 'like' their content. Indeed, I set up 'liking' on this blog a short while ago.

But LinkedIn's adoption is a very interesting development (it's not liking things on LinkedIn for Facebook, it's liking things on LinkedIn). What will this mean for the web as a whole? I often think that we'll eventually be saying we like things to everything.

In English, at least in the UK, we have become very relaxed to people's speech. One of the things that some foreign language learners find strange is that we say love a lot. It might be true that we do love something genuinely, but often what we mean is we really, really like it. In some languages, love means romantic love and you can't apply it to other things. I think some people are shocked by how often English speakers use it. Perhaps even some English speakers are shocked by how often it is used.

So I wonder if, in the future, we have succumed to Facebook Speak and we will eventually say: 'oh I like that' to mean that we love it (confused much?). What do you think?

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